Kai's Stuff

wretched.

[kai-cooper]

Lost Wanderer - Frankenstein's Creature x GN Reader (Platonic)

Part 1 > Part 2 > Part 3 > Part 4 > Part 5 > Part 6 > Part 7 > Part 8 > Part 9 > Part 10 > Part 11 > Part 12 > Part 13 > Part 14 > Part 15 > Part 16 >

Chapter 1: Misfortune

A prodigal wanderer traveling through the forests of Europe finds themselves injured and alone. In fear and frustration they call out through the silent trees for anyone to help them. Someone does come, but the wanderer does not know if they are even human, or if they have good intentions.

{Story takes place right after the burning of the DeLacey cottage. Gender-neutral reader. Reader does not understand French.)

Chapter 1

Things could not have turned out much worse for you. That's what you told yourself. 

It had been months since the argument with your family.  Months since, one fateful day, you decided to leave them. To travel on the open roads across Europe. 

You had many misadventures since then. And you had to contend with yourself and finally tell the truth. You were not a romantic vagabond on the search for your own soul and people who accepted you. You were only another dirty beggar. A prodigal, and no one would care if you disappeared. And you had been so, so naive. And this last misadventure had been your greatest folly. After only one week, you had realized that your current traveling companions that you had met in some Bavarian inn were naught but a band of robbers and thieves. And, through snatches of conversation, you had found out that they had plotted to lure you into those dark forests to...dispatch you, and profit in the process. 

You had fled in the night three days ago. And you avoided the road in fear of pursuit, when disaster closed it's jaws on you again. You had stepped in some animal hole on accident, and violently twisted your ankle. Through tears and muffled screams, you had splinted it as best you could. But it was extremely painful, and it was clear you could go no further. 

This was where you found yourself now. All alone, lying on the forest floor, with your back against a tree. No one friendly know where you were, and no one was coming to help you. And as the yawning darkness of night started to descend, the sun abandoned you too, and you caught yourself close to weeping and cursing yourself. So great had your stress and terror of the last few days that you found yourself coming apart like the stitches of a worn garment-all of you breaking loose at once. At the height of your own personal agony, you called out for someone - anyone to come help you, to please rescue you. 

You regretted it as soon as you opened your mouth. Your pathetic voice had been swallowed up in the encroaching night. Who know what predators lurked our here - bears, wolves? Not to mention the more human of threats-your pursuers. It had been a miracle that nothing had found you so far, and you had now just spat in the face of your good fortune. 

Fear started to creep into your heart as the shadows of sunset began to lengthen. As your eyes started to fail you, your mind darted to a story you had unfortunately overheard. One of  a kindly French family who had lived in this area, and had arrived home to find their father accosted by a gigantic humanoid monster, too frightening for description, tearing him apart by his legs. After fending the monster off by beating it with a stout club of firewood, it fled into these very forests, and filled the air with a torrent of demonic howling that kept the family trembling in fear all night. They fled, and it was well they did, for the cabin was soon found burned to the ground completely. Travelers now walked these very woods in extreme caution, and always well armed. For the family was well bred, it was told, credible, and with no reason to lie. 

You whispered a prayer that it was just a story - please, let it have just been a story. You squeezed your eyes shut, slowing your breathing, and letting exhaustion overcome you. 

You did not know how long you had stayed like that. Trembling, dozing, in and out of a fitful pained sleep. The snapping of twigs woke you. Now fully alert, your eyes darted to the source. But the night had almost fully arrived, and you saw very little. You took another shaky breath, barely moving, when your gaze landed on something that made your heart stop. It was the worst of all your fears. 

There was an impossibly tall humanoid shape, swallowed by shadow in the trees. It leaned away from a trunk, still, looming, only a silhouette. You hoped against hope that it was only a malformed tree, so gigantic was it, that your mind had to be playing a trick on you. If it had been real, it would have been staring down at you, directly, like a hawk stares down at prey. Piercing with keen intent. 

You stared at it more, but it did not move. Neither had you. You took a few more quiet, shuddering breaths, and had almost fully convinced yourself that it was indeed a tree. Then you relaxed, and shifted, still keeping your eyes locked on the object. 

Then it moved. 

Bushes rustled, twigs snapped, and it approached, crouching down low as if to become more stealthy, turning one way in a circle around you, as if it hoped to stay on the edge of your vision. But it's conniving efforts were in vain. The last cold blue rays of the already hidden sun reached it, and you saw it. 

It was hunched, and something dark covered it's back and head. You would have been convinced it was a bear if it wasn't for the two large pale limbs it carried off the ground. One was always searching and reaching for cover in the bushes, the other was pulled across what you assumed was it's head, obscuring the lower half of its...face. 

You recognized it was a face only by the eye-like shapes above the crook of one arm. They were sunken, only mere holes in the shadows, but the light glinted in those sockets in only the clouded way you had seen in the eyes of infected livestock. The skin of it's limbs were of a greyish tan, pulled tight in some parts, and in others hanging limply as though it were hardly attached to the wearer at all, puffy and loose. It reminded you of the gaseous rot you had seen in the swollen corpses of animals left to nature. In terror, you had almost believed it was not skin at all-not natural skin, but a coat of human flesh pieced together and pulled over the wearer. 

You had turned your head and started to hyperventilate, and the being, still hiding it's face, stopped, and looked at you directly. The idea of it wearing only a coat of skin parted immediately from your mind as it moved. With each new position and expression the skin warped and jerked sharply, twisting as if the only bits of muscled attached underneath were only barely holding on, glued down like parts of leatherwork. Black, stringy locks of hair swung from the crown like dead fingers grasping at nothing. And it was gigantic-so gigantic. Covered with tattered and moldering rags that may have only once been clothes. Even it's dark cloak with the hood pulled over it's massive head did little to either cover or conceal the horrid figure. 

It had stopped it's stalking, and was poised directly towards you. You felt your eyes water, but no sound or movement did you make. But you couldn't look away. 

Then the giant spoke. 

What it said you could not comprehend. It's voice was deep and coarse, like the low growl of an angry bull you had once heard before. The sound seemed to echo from it's chest as though it were a hollow drum rather than emanate from it's mouth. 

You made no motion that you had heard it, and it made the same similar set of growled tones. You felt your body begin to fully awaken from your paralysis of fear. Taking flight was not an option. As it crept towards you you pulled a knife out of your pocket and gripped it in your fist, blade pointed outward. It was a pitiful little thing, just a minuscule tool with a blade not even longer than your thumb. But you made a show of it, arm clenched upwards and shaking. 

That was the wrong move. 

The being's face grimaced and the eye sockets creased in anger. It yelled at you, furious, again in some language you did not know. You envisioned this monster diving to attack you. You scrambled back instinctively, closer to the tree, and winced as your injury coursed pain up you leg. In have a second you recovered your senses, and still holding the knife shouted back: 

"Begone! Leave me alone!"

You had meant the should to sound commanding, intimidating. You had remembered someone saying it was the best way to confront a bear about to charge. Instead, your voice had cracked. It sounded pitiful. 

The monster paused. In a low growl, which still sounded menacing to you, it seemed to ask a question. You only caught one word: 

" français?" 

French. That was it's language. And of all the things your family had pressed upon you, learning French was not one of your  priorities. That fact had been a source of pain for you in some regions you had traveled to, where you picked up very scant words and relied on others to translate. 

But right now, you shook your head. You could not tell if it was at the acknowledgement that you couldn't understand or the absurdity that a monster in the woods spoke French. 

The giant suddenly tilted it's head and arm downwards, it's movement stilted and sudden like a broken automaton. Not moving your head you glanced your eyes downwards to see what it was looking at. 

In your struggling you had fully extended your injured leg outwards from you. And one of the only clear things seen in that fallen darkness was your foot, swollen painfully in a dirty and holed stocking, tied straight with twigs and some of the only string you owned. 

Your eyes widened, and your gaze shot back to the face of the monster. Now it knew for sure that you were alone, hurt, and deeply vulnerable. It's head slowly raised, looking at you straight in the eyes. You could not help but tremble slightly, for fear of what would happen next. 

Unexplainably, it turned and bounded away like a deer. 

You let out a gasping breath you didn't know you were holding, and you let the knife drop into your lap. Your hands ached from the force from which you held it. 

But you could not take your eyes off the forest. 

[kai-cooper]

Lost Wanderer - Frankenstein's Creature x GN Reader (Platonic)

Chapter 16 - The Creature's Thoughts

Part 1 > Part 2 > Part 3 > Part 4 > Part 5 > Part 6 > Part 7 > Part 8 > Part 9 > Part 10 > Part 11 > Part 12 > Part 13 > Part 14 > Part 15 > Part 16 >

The creature stumbled far into the forest, still clutching the papers and journal in his hands, nearly crumbling them under his shaking grip. His breathing was fast and ragged, and his eyes stung anew as tears tried to remember how to emerge from deadened flesh.

They should have been used to that by now. He should have been used to that by now.

He ran only because he did not know what else to do. Emotions stirred up and burned within his chest and throat, despair and sadness leading to an all consuming rage. It ate at his heart and escaped through his gritted teeth in growls and groans of stifled agony. He wanted to scream – he wanted to rend the skies with his cries to a God that never heard him. But he was still too close to the real people. The beautiful people. The people who would not hesitate to kill him if they ever found him.

As he bounded through the trees a low hanging branch struck him in the eye. That was one thing too much. He threw down his papers and ripped the branch from it's trunk, smashing it against a nearby boulder, again and again until it was nothing but splinters. When it had disintegrated and his hands still rung with its vibrations, he ripped a sapling out of the ground, and clawed at the dirt, the rocks, the bushes and everything around him. Tears streamed down his face, blood trickled from minute tiny scratches until the area around him was nothing but a crater.

He collapsed to his knees, his torn hands now clawing at his own skin, this face, his arms, tugging on his hair, as if he could simply rip away this rotted body he felt so trapped in. As if he could only shed his skin like a serpent and emerge a beautiful young man, whose father would run to embrace him, whose friends would smile upon him, and whose lover would kiss him on his lips, overjoyed to have ever met him.

He ceased his clawing and sobbed into his palms aloud, shaking and wailing. None of this would be true. None of it would ever be true.

How could he have ever been so blind and foolish? When that little companion showed less fear towards him his sickened heart had dared to hope. And when they showed him empathy he greedily lapped it up like a starving dog. And when they had seen his face and not ran away he felt like a man seeing the sun after years of imprisonment. He wanted so much to run to them and pull them into his arms but even then he had shown restraint. Now he had gone too far. He had become too greedy. It was too easy to speak of the hurts his creator had caused him. It was too intoxicating to hear a kind word soothing his lonely heart. But the circumstances of his origin was the rotted core that he knew no one could ever tolerate. A being made from corpses, never born of a woman, never named, unnatural in size and strength and in features. And how he hoped, how he had hoped!

All those hopes were dashed to ruin. That well of goodwill and empathy had run dry once he was truly known for what he was. No matter what he told them, they believed he was an aggressor to the DeLaceys! Even after knowing him and understanding his plight, they chose not to side with him. And his friend had looked at him with that horrified expression that told him they were going to run. They were going to abandon him for good this time!

The creature let out a stifled scream and rocked back and forth, his clenched hands to his head. He wanted to make them understand, he wanted to be understood! Brief flickers of the thoughts of painful revenge crackled like lightning in his mind. But when he closed his eyes he felt those two smaller hands raking through his hair, removing the splinter from his hand, giving him a blanket to sleep under. Those moments felt like the dreams of angels he used to have, the dreams he didn't want to wake up from. Could he hurt them?

No. Because he couldn't be without them.

He still rocked back and forth, now chewing on the side of his thumb and humming to himself. His heartbeat and breathing would not slow down.

Perhaps if he took them away. For good. Away from everyone else, and isolated them, then they would feel like he felt. Then maybe they would apologize, and see how alone and desperate solitude was. But a smaller, weaker thought spoke to him.

But if you do that, they will never love you.

Not true! He wanted to denounce. They just don't understand. I can make them understand!

But the idea of that face, that kind face, being frightened and heartbroken made him sick.

Perhaps he could go back. Perhaps he could apologize, and everything would be alright. He didn't feel he was in the wrong, but maybe a show of how servile he could be would be enough to keep them from leaving him alone.

It won't be enough. You cannot undo what you are.

Dark had fallen long ago. A cold wind blew, and without his cloak he felt the chill of it on his skin. He shivered, holding himself tightly. But it wasn't from the cold that he shook. No, he should be used to that too.

Victor Frankenstein was the only one who could make this right. No one on earth could ever love him. No one on earth would ever accept him. He gathered the papers that threatened to blow away, and clutched them to his heart, wishing that he was instead holding his friend. Wishing instead, that they could comfort him, and tell him all was forgiven. All was well.

He reached out and clutched the journal. The one that showed his own making, and the parts stolen from others. The skin of someone else that he wore on his frame smeared tiny droplets of blood on the pages. He had hurt himself. And this time, there was no one to remedy it.

In a painful, half-dead fashion, he wandered slowly back to the campsite. Perhaps he could take an item that had belonged to his companion. Something to prove to his maker the validity of his story. And something to remember them by. He would have to hold that instead, for the rest of his life.

The cloak was still on the ground where he had left it. As he had expected, his former friend was not there. He studied the area for an item of theirs to take with him. Surprisingly, he found many candidates. They had left their pack. They had left their tools.

They had even left their food. And...money?

The ground was too hard to look for footprints. But he did spy some fallen leaves that had been freshly disturbed in a trail. Throwing on his now cold cloak and placing the papers and journal inside the pocket, he followed it.

After some distance, all the leaves in a circle were disturbed. Twigs on the ground were broken, and that hard dirt had been kicked up. The curves of several prints were those of...horses.

Rescuers, perhaps? He scoffed bitterly to himself. Then he saw something metal, barely glimmering in the moonlight. He crouched down, and brushed away the leaves from it.

It was their tiny, little knife.

Without any conscious thought Leshy bounded off into the forest, following the trail. He did not wish to find an unmarked grave.

[kai-cooper]

Lost Wanderer - Frankenstein's Creature x GN Reader (Platonic)

Part 1 > Part 2 > Part 3 > Part 4 > Part 5 > Part 6 > Part 7 > Part 8 > Part 9 > Part 10 > Part 11 > Part 12 > Part 13 > Part 14 > Part 15 > Part 16 >

Chapter 15: The Open Journal

The mornings had gone from just the suggestion of cold to the beginnings of winter. You awoke to a crackling fire and something musty and heavy wrapped around you. A touch of the ripped fabric told you that it was Leshy's cloak, but the giant himself was absent.

The sun had already risen to mid-morning. Having spent most of the night shaking, you had been exhausted. He had let you sleep, and no doubt had gone off into the woods to either tend to his own needs or search for food...without even his cloak to keep him warm.

Rising, you called out softly for him, the memory of the scene Kleiner had led behind instilling caution into you. Walking with the cloak still wrapped tightly around you, you made your way past a tree, when your foot caught on something half-buried in the roots.

Papers scattered. A leather bound book opened, partially covered in the leaves it had been hidden in. The wind started to carry the papers away. Scrambling, you managed to collect them all. As your eyes rested on the writing, you noticed it was in the French language. Accidental curiosity overtook you, and you saw over and over a name written in the letters.

DeLacey, DeLacey, DeLacey.

The family of the burned cabin.

A spidery splotch of black caught your attention next. It spanned across the pages of the opened journal you now held in your hands. The cover's edges seemed to be crisp with some unknown substance. But the illustration on the open page was more prominent. And more terrible.

The ink had long since dried, but it showed a dismembered human head. A doctor's anatomy notes, again written in that language you did not understand, pointed to a face peeled of its skin. One lidless eye was placed in its socket. The other, away from it, showing the tendons and neurons nearby to hold it in place. Though these features were gruesome, there were others you recognized. A distinct slightly curved nose. Teeth straight as new tombstones. Long, black hair.

"What are you reading!?" came a snarl above your head. Nearly dropping the papers, you turned around.

"I–"

"Do you think that because you are my only friend, you have the right to act as though you own me, and peer through my property?" Leshy stood shirtless before you, the skin around his heart tinged a pinkish red. His face crumpled in wrath, and for a moment you were back in the forest, injured, staring down someone you were afraid of.

"No! I'm sorry I tripped over them when I went looking for you."

"And read them on accident, I suppose?"

"Why do you have the DeLacey's letters?"

A conflicted look nearly pierced the anger on his face. His breathing became rapid, and he pressed his palms into his forehead as though he could steady himself. "I took them. I took them to give to my father, so that he may hear my plight, and know its truth."

"You wanted to go back to your father?"

Leshy began to pace like a caged animal in front of you. "Yes. I did. One fateful night all my hopes had been destroyed. For months I had hid in a little alcove adjacent to the Delacey's cottage. I was cold. I was starving. Everyone I had ever met had only sought to harm or kill me. I huddled against their wall to keep warm. My soul grew nourished on their kind words to each other that I heard, wishing that they were directed towards me. I worked each night to provide for them - firewood and farm labor I gave as payment for shelter. But they never knew me. They were poor but they were rich in love, something I had never had! They grew in happiness and I longed to join them. But on the fateful night I tried to befriend their blind father, the son came home. Seeing this body I have he ripped me to the ground, and beat me even when the tears were still wet on my face! How he betrayed me! How he tormented me as all men!

"I fled. I did not harm them. But I could have. And sometimes I believed, I should have! All would have been forgiven – I would have forgiven them if they accepted me. But when I came crawling like a dog to begin my begging again, they had fled. Abandoned their home! Abandoned me! Rejected me! Their protector all these months! That little place of happiness could not live. That garden could not live. I burned all of it to the ground, if only because I needed something to reflect the harm that had been caused to me.

"I had stolen those letters long ago. I stole into the cabin and took them, to read the words between the family members, between sweet Saphie and her Felix. I wanted those words. But now I saw that I could use them. My father owes a debt to me, my first betrayer. I had a bargain to make with him – he must atone! But he must first see the misery he has caused, and all evidence of it. Give me those!"

He snatched the papers and the journal from your hands, smoothing the papers of the letters as though they were precious and damaged from just your touch.

"Leshy...if they had known you I don't believe they would have truly hated you. I think...they were just frightened. It's a frightening thing to have someone spying on you for so long."

"Oh!" he laughed. "You think that was why they were afraid? Not so, foolish little one! I never told him that. I never even had the chance. I only told father DeLacey I was a traveler, alone, and that I sought the help of kind friends who were prejudiced against me" –he choked back a sob– "and I was right for thinking so!"

"Perhaps it was only your size and your manner that frightened them a little–"

"My size–my face! Things I cannot change! I was crumpled on the ground, a wretch begging for mercy when he struck. And still you lay the blame on me! I should not wonder that you side with your fellow creatures, those who look as you do. Despite being my only companion you have made me lonelier and more miserable than before I met you, you with your lack of empathy. You, unmarred, still beautiful in the image of your so-called God! And here is the terrible truth that I have hidden!"

He held the journal open, the page still set on the illustration of the severed head. "Here I am! Here! I was not made by God, but a man who thought he was! Victor Frankenstein plundered the corpses of animals and men and women to form together life as he saw fit. I was not born. I was never born! No mother knew me, and was never held by a parent. I was pieced together from the dead, and brought to life. Then I was abandoned to die alone, the moment I opened my eyes I was deemed to hideous to love. There!"

Your mind ceased to think, and your heart still beat rapidly from being caught in the waves of turmoil and venom radiating from the...being in front of you. Brought back to life? Pieced together? The wrinkled skin, the seams of some sort of strange alchemy keeping him together, all of this raced across your memory. But it was too much now.

"I...I need to walk alone...I can't..." With a trembling arm you tried to hand him back his cloak. But he didn't take it from you.

"Spare me your excuses and leave! Remove yourself from my sight, or better yet, I shall remove myself. I know your heart. Now you know the truth, and you will surely leave me for the last time."

"I just need some time–"

He didn't wait. He took his papers and bounded off into the forest. Unable to take the strain, you dropped the cloak to the ground.

In your own direction you wandered off. For over a mile. You mind turning over everything that you had learned. Desperately trying to grasp reality. A reality you weren't sure you could believe in. What did all of this mean? What were you supposed to do?

In this agony of thought you had lost your caution. And it was too late when you realized that there were sounds of thundering hooves heading right towards you. Crashing through the undergrowth, one ragged looking man on a horse gripped you by the arm. Another jumped off his and grappled with you. In the attack you had tried to pull out that tiny blade you always kept, but the second man wrenched your hand and you dropped it. In only moments you were pinned to the ground, your hands tied, and a dirty cloth wrapped around your mouth and tied behind your head.

Your muffled screams did not travel far. A rope was tied from your wrists to one of the horses, and you were led off, struggling to stay on your feet. If you dropped, you had no doubt they would drag you across the forest floor until you were dead.

The men were Arnaud and Gotfrid. Kleiner's highwaymen.

[kai-cooper]

Lost Wanderer - Frankenstein's Creature x GN Reader (Platonic)

Part 1 > Part 2 > Part 3 > Part 4 > Part 5 > Part 6 > Part 7 > Part 8 > Part 9 > Part 10 > Part 11 > Part 12 > Part 13 > Part 14 > Part 15 > Part 16 >

Chapter 14: Murder in the Forest

It had been a week since you resumed travel with your companion. As you had always noticed with him, his moods seemed to come in waves. He would at times express joy as if he had never seen a happy sight in his life. At other times he seemed to be secretly despondent. Despite having nearly mastered your language in so short of a time, whatever was on his mind he did not even attempt to communicate to you. In days after, his pensive, quiet mood grew. Something was weighing on your desperate friend heavier and heavier as time passed. 

This deep worry across his marred face would turn into bouts of irritability, then profuse apologizing, then back to quiet. It was unnerving. 

And it became even more so when you came across that gruesome scene. 

You both were traveling near sunset, neither one talking much. Your conversations had deadened to a tense silence. With no reason to look towards the giant next to you, your eyes had wandered to the ground. An especially odd yellowish pebble lay in the mulch on the forest floor. Trying to find some reason for conversation, you picked it up, turning it over in your hand. The shape and size was vaguely familiar. 

Once you understood what it was, you had dropped it. A human tooth. 

You must have made some sort of sound in shock. Your companion was instantly by your side, asking you what you had seen. Your eyes wandered to the nearby tree, heart pounding. The sun glistened off of a sheen of sickly brown and red splashed across the bark. Blood. Walking around the tree, you saw a notch deeply embedded in the wood, the crimson tide soaking into the tender white flesh of the lumber. 

Your foot sank into soft earth. The soil had been disturbed beneath the tree in the unmistakable shape of a grave. A marker, a badly made cross of twigs, lay on the ground at the head of the grave. A piece of white fabric was tied to it, and with a sinking heart you reached for the marker. 

The handkerchief had the initials I.M. carefully embroidered on the corner. It had been Ingrid Miller’s handkerchief, a young member and victim of Kleiner’s gang. The bark on the back of the stick cross had been stripped away, and in it was carved a message in your own native tongue:

“And so ends all who think they may escape me”

“Leshy…” you said in choking breaths. “We have to leave here, now!” Without a word of warning you ran. The giant followed at a brisk pace, his head turning in worry from you to the scene behind. Only when you were miles away did your strength give out, and he asked you again what you had seen. 

You told him everything. Kleiner. How he had taken you in. How he had fooled you. How he preyed upon the poor and the weak and how many awful things you had seen him do. Now that he could understand you in full, there was no reason to keep anything back. 

Ingrid Miller had been his latest victim. He knew that you had escaped, and he knew that you were seen in the area. That message was for you. 

Leshy’s fists clutched, and his face contorted like a demon. “He does not know how formidable your ally is,” he hissed. “Or how much of a mistake it would be if he chose to prey upon you.” Before you could question his statement, he turned in the direction of the scene far behind you. With a sound that was half a sigh and half a sob he shook his head. “And thusly no one mourns the wretches rejected from companionship. And I suppose, no avenger can be found among the ranks of mankind to inflict a punishment for such wrongdoing.”

“I would be satisfied, at least, with justice.” 

He snorted, mocking your statement. “Indeed! The justice of man. We have already seen it fruits behind us.” The stormy look did not leave his face, and the ragged strips of black hair crowded around his flashing eyes. “If such a friend turned foe should ever treat me in this fashion, he would have none of the protection of the beautiful and loved to spare him from me.”

“What do you mean by that?” 

He ignored your question. The silence of the forest wrapped around you. 

“Does it frighten you?” he asked, so much more quietly now. “The dead? Their remains?”

There was something almost rhetorical in the way he asked you. His shoulders hunched, and his jaw set as he walked past you. “It was the nature of my father’s work.” 

As his shadow fell over you and beyond, it was clear that he was keeping something back from you. Something terrible.

[kyannnite]

dusted off ye olde apple pencil… it’s time to make a choice 🦗🦂

[charlottesjal]

I too can create desolation

[memeuplift]

[kai-cooper]

Small Town Survival Notes

I'm doing a bit of research for a story of mine about a character that watches the corruption of a small town around him. Some of the research is based off my own observations from living in a small town myself, especially as a neurodivergent person.

Is the unfortunate tendency to equate normal=good, especially if you've been neurodivergent your whole life and you've been taught that different=bad, then normal=good.

But there's a lot of behaviors that go around small towns that are very common and very toxic at the same time. But since common=normal and normal=good, it can lead people to follow these behaviors in step and punish people who don't.

Like yelling and swearing at your kids and spouse. Or gossiping about others and making fun of them. Making fun of poor people. Judging people based on their family lineage. Triangulating people and making sure they don't get the same access to goods and services that the more "preferable" people do. Grouping up and excluding certain people. And making sure the people who don't do these behaviors get the same treatment.

This is all just to say, be critical of every behavior you see, and ask yourself if the "normal" person is really something worth becoming.

[seabeck]

Maple in the rain

[kai-cooper]

I moved from writing on my couch to my desk for my neck health only to start writing on my bed like THIS

[tapeworm420]

Late night franken posting part 2!! I did this painting of the creature after 500 beers. This is kinda how i envisioned him after reading the book, but the painting didn’t turn out quite as horrific and uncanny as i would’ve liked. Anyway i dont hate it, I may attempt a more hideous version in the future but for now i bestow upon thee, a creature feature featuring the creature

[maybe-an-aspd-angel]

[kai-cooper]

[memeuplift]

[important-cat-pics]

[kai-cooper]

People who make film adaptations: "Well, we had to make this character more visually appealing so the audience could empathize with them"

Why? What do you mean? Aren't you a writer? Don't you hire actors? What is the purpose of making good fiction if you cannot learn to engage with the audience? What is the purpose of being an audience if you cannot engage with yourself? Are you afraid to test your own moral limits? Are you afraid that no, you don't have the goodness inside you to have empathy for something or someone not like you? Do you force the ugly to become beautiful because you are scared of what you will or won't find in yourself?

[kai-cooper]